NRA Foundation -- the National Rifle Association subsidiary responsible for the group’s school safety initiative -- helped fund the marksmanship training of the gunman who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, this week.

The Associated Press reports that the NRA Foundation gave a $10,827 grant to an air rifle program that gunman Nikolas Cruz participated in. According to one of his teammates, Cruz was a “very good shot.” The NRA Foundation’s website says it has “awarded nearly $335 million in grant funding in support of the shooting sports” since 1990.

The NRA Foundation -- the “charitable” wing of the NRA -- is also where your money goes if you donate to an NRA program called “National School Shield,” the gun group’s purported solution to school shootings.

National School Shield was first mentioned in December 2012 during a speech by NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre a week after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. When the program debuted in April 2013, NRA spokesperson (and current Arkansas governor) Asa Hutchinson claimed its findings were “independent” from the NRA. The program pushes more guns in schools, including arming teachers, and has been touted by the NRA’s media arm in the wake of the latest school shooting.

Despite the claims of independence, National School Shield’s domain was registered by the NRA five days after Newtown:

The jump is even more stark when compared to its spending during the previoustwo presidential elections in 2012 and 2008, when their outlays topped out at $261 million and $204 million, respectively, according to similar audits.These spending totals include all of the NRA’s operations in 2016, from law enforcement programs and hunter services to education and training.

Opensecrets: The latest school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has left 17 people dead. It is the 30th mass shooting in the first 45 days of 2018.*In 2017, 2,239 people were shot in mass shootings, leaving 437 people dead. The fatal shooting in October 2017 at a Las Vegas music festival, which killed 58 concertgoers and injured hundreds more, is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Only 16 months earlier, a gunman armed with a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle murdered 49 people and injured 58 at an Orlando nightclub in what was then the country's worst mass shooting. The horrific attack came less than six months after a man and a woman opened fire at a San Bernardino, California, social services center, killing 14 and injuring 22. And with each mass shooting — from Columbine to Sandy Hook; Fort Hood to Virginia Tech — the national debate over gun ownership renews.

On the five year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, CT, MSNBC’s Morning Joe pointed out that despite strong public support for regulating firearms on the federal level, Congress has been slow to move on any type of gun safety legislation since the tragedy.

Co-host Joe Scarborough mentioned the number of Americans killed by gun violence since Sandy Hook and highlighted that Americans on both sides of the political divide overwhelming support gun safety measures, including banning assault weapons, expanding background checks and bump stocks, like those that were used in the October Las Vegas mass shooting. Scarborough noted that despite the support, members of Congress opposing reforms are “playing to a small hard core interest group in Washington D.C., and not even listening to the majority of” Americans. From the December 14 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

Don Lemon calls out Florida lawmakers CNN's Don Lemon calls out Florida legislators who voted down a motion to consider a weapon ban following a deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and describes one thing they almost all have in common - an A or A+ rating from the NRA.

Sandy Hook mom calls for legislation after FL HS shootingNicole Hockley’s son Dylan was killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012. She joins Stephanie Ruhle to discuss what needs to be done to prevent future tragedies like this and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Guns kill nearly 1,300 US children each year, study says(So much for safety training)Now, a study based on data from 2012 to 2014 suggests that, on average, 5,790 children in the United States receive medical treatment in an emergency room each year for a gun-related injury. About 21% of those injuries are unintentional, similar to the third-grader's case. From 2012 to 2014, on average, 1,297 children died annually from a gun-related injury in the US, according to the study, published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday. The study also revealed which states in the US saw most of those deaths among children and which children may be most at risk for a gun-related injury. "When you start putting numbers like that to real lives, real people every day who are injured by firearms ... it confirms a statistic we already know a lot about," said Weiser, who was not involved in the study. Doctors also emphasize that there are methods available to safely secure and store firearms, away from children, and they recommend that parents employ those methods when keeping guns in the home.

"I just want to ask (Trump) why" - Parkland student"I want to ask why a mentally ill 19-year-old was able to legally purchase a gun here in Florida and why he was able to come into my high school and shoot 17 people," says Parkland student Sarah Chadwick of her desire to talk to Trump about the shooting at her school last week.

As Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives move to loosen standards nationwide on gun owners carrying their weapons in public, one of the most prominent gun violence researchers in the United States is imploring media to “not just cover the politics” of the proposed legislation but also “the harmful effects” permissive concealed carry laws already have on public safety.

The House is poised to vote today on H.R. 38, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, to advance the National Rifle Association’s top legislative priority. The legislation would mandate that states recognize concealed carry permits issued by all other states, even though standards for carrying a gun in public vary dramatically.

In a last-minute move, Republican backers of the bill are combining H.R. 38 with legislation that would ensure records that disqualify people from passing a background check are submitted into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The move endangers the prospect of a broadly backed bill to improve that system by pairing it with legislation that researchers and law enforcement groups warn will have a deleterious impact on public safety.

In an email interview with Media Matters, Dr. Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, explained the public safety stakes of weakening laws nationwide for carrying guns in public, and urged media to not just cover the “politics” of the fight over the legislation “but the reality of the already lax concealed gun carry laws, the harmful effects of those laws, and convey how radically national [concealed carry reciprocity] would change gun laws in the U.S.”

Asked about the public safety implications of lax concealed carry laws, Webster cited peer-reviewed studiesto explain that “the latest and strongest research on de-regulating civilian concealed carry of firearms indicates that this is a path toward more, not less violence, more not fewer deaths.”

For once, a mass shooting seemed to create a bipartisan consensus — rare in the polarized debate over gun control — that something had to change. In the days after a gunman killed 58 people at an outdoor country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in October, members of Congress set their sights on "bump stocks," devices that allow a semiautomatic firearm to mimic a fully automatic one.Lawmakers called for more regulation of bump stocks and even outright bans. They vowed — Democrats and Republicans alike — to make the issue a legislative priority. But that was then.Four months after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Congress has not acted on bump stocks, while states and local governments have moved to limit the sale and possession of the devices.

Following the mass murder at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, the NRA went into its post-mass shooting standard operating procedure -- shutting down its social media accounts and refusing to speak to the press. Two days later, the NRA's media arm addressed the shooting, with NRA News host Cam Edwards opining that it was "completely inappropriate" to discuss gun policies the day after the incident, adding, "I did not receive a single email communication chastising me or complaining that we should have been talking about policy and politics as opposed to remembering the victims in Charleston."

Soon, though, the NRA was forced to issue an official statement after one of its board members created controversy by blaming the shooting on the church's slain pastor, who was a supporter of gun safety policies.

While distancing itself from the board member's comments, the NRA claimed on June 20 that out of "respect" for the victims, "we do not feel that this is [a] appropriate time for a political debate," adding, "We will have no further comment until all the facts are known."

Three weeks later, the NRA did offer an additional comment on the Charleston shooting, following a push by gun safety advocates for expanded background checks. (It would later be revealed that the gunman was able to purchase a weapon despite being legally prohibited because of an NRA-backed loophole in federal law.) In a July 8 statement attacking gun safety groups, the NRA said, "gun control advocates are offering a solution that won't solve the problem. Even they admit that the legislation they are pushing wouldn't have prevented the tragic crimes they are exploiting for political purposes."

The NRA has continued to advance this narrative on the Charleston shooting and proposed gun law reforms. In a July 17 post on the website of its lobbying arm, the NRA lashed out at Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) after the South Carolina congressman proposed eliminating the NRA-backed loophole that helped arm the Charleston gunman.

Clyburn was "exploiting a recent tragedy" according to the NRA, which also said, "Gun control advocates are shameless in their willingness to exploit tragedy to achieve their agenda." The NRA re-published its attack on Clyburn at the conservative news website Daily Caller on July 19.

The very next day, the NRA's top lobbyist used the July 16 Chattanooga mass shooting to call for changes to gun laws, tellingMilitary Times, "It's outrageous that members of our armed services have lost their lives because the government has forced them to be disarmed in the workplace. Congress should pursue a legislative fix to ensure that our service men and women are allowed to defend themselves on U.S. soil."

The fact is that after pretty much any high-profile national event, mass shooting or otherwise, policy debates are often triggered. In the NRA's hypocritical world view, however, calls for stronger gun laws are disrespectful, exploitative, and shameless -- while calls for less restrictions are sensible, timely, and relevant. Even worse, the gun group's post-shooting strategy operates from behind a façade of "respect" for the victims.

The NRA's doublespeak on Charleston and Chattanooga, however, reveals that its real concern is its own agenda.

Survivor: Next mass shooting is on legislators - The Florida state House rejected a ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines as dozens of survivors of last week's school shooting headed to the state Capitol to turn their grief into political action.

Quotes

"Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it. It will turn to gold. Resurrection will be now. Every moment, a new beauty." - Rumi

"God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that." - Joseph Campbell

"Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history." - Carl Jung

"Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society." - George Washington

“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” - Dalai Lama

“Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison. When the door is so wide open?” ― Rumi